Exercise

Keeping a dog active through regular exercise is one of the most important things a person can do to ensure that their dog is healthy and happy. Walking and running are two of the more common exercises that people use to keep their dog in shape. However, by no means are walking and running the only forms of effective exercise options available to pet parents. These days, there is a wide range of b... »

Here in the U.S., we will be celebrating the Memorial Day holiday this weekend. Besides being a nice 3-day break, Memorial Day weekend is also traditionally viewed as the unofficial kickoff to summer. It is somewhat amazing how, once Memorial Day arrives, people will almost automatically spend more time outside and generally become more active than in the winter. Summer is certainly conducive to a... »

The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) has recently released the results of its latest annual pet obesity survey. I had contacted APOP because their site did not provide much detail on this year’s survey. Dr. Ernie Ward was kind enough to send over more detailed data, which I will be sharing in this post. As I discussed last week, the APOP pet obesity survey indicated that America... »

The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) has recently released the results of its latest annual pet obesity survey. Unfortunately for dogs (and cats) in the U.S., the news is not good. According to APOP, in the U.S., 58% of all cats and 54% of all dogs are overweight or obese. For dogs, this is an increase from last year’s survey, which reported that 52.7% of U.S. dogs were overweig... »

There is much evidence in the scientific community that links dog ownership to improved health. One of the ‘problems’ with many of the studies is that of a small sample size. In essence, the study might indicate a linkage between do ownership and improved health, but the relatively small number of people/dogs that participate in the study make it ‘harder’ to make broad inferences acros... »

Laser therapy burst onto the human physical therapy (PT) scene over the past ten years. Laser machines, once novel equipment, began to appear in virtually all PT clinics. I know this from first-hand experience. Back in 2007, I made the 80-mile round-trip to a sports doctor to get laser treatment on my Achilles injury. By the next year, laser machines became available in 3 different PT clinics that... »

Like with electrical stimulation, ultrasound therapy is a physical rehabilitation modality that has been used in human PT for many years, and is now becoming common in canine rehabilitation programs. I remember back almost 10 years ago when I had my first troublesome injury, a strained Achilles tendon, (actual diagnosis was Achilles tendinosis, which means that the collagen fibers in the tendon we... »

Last week, I write about temperature therapy and how it is used in canine physical rehabilitation. Today, I will provide an overview of electrical stimulation, another physical therapy modality that has been used for years in human therapy and that is now becoming quite common in canine therapy as well. Electrical stimulation, also known as “estim”, is exactly what it sounds like: the application ... »

I recently had a minor sports related injury to my c-spine (i.e. neck) and have started a physical therapy program. It is interesting to observe the therapists in action on all of the patients, and the range of modalities that are used to heal the injuries and prevent re occurrence. Interestingly, many of the treatment protocols that are used on humans can also be used on injured dogs with great s... »

As you probably know, today is the last FitDog Friday blog hop. We started this canine fitness oriented blog hop as a way to bring the blogging community together on the important topics related to canine fitness. Along the way, we hope that we have inspired readers to not only get their dogs in shape, but to get themselves in shape. The truth is, much of the fitness tenets that apply to humans al... »